The Way — from Le Puy to Santiago

For more than a thousand years people have been walking from all over Europe to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. What it is about this place that has drawn people to it for centuries? Clearly the idea of “place” must have an incredible hold on the human imagination to draw so many people to a small city featuring an architecturally undistinguished cathedral over such an extended period of time. Not only has the city of Santiago called to millions of pilgrims over the centuries, but the Way itself, the route and the many cities and villages along it, exert their own powerful force on people.

Santiago de Compostela means Saint James of the Field of Stars. The legend goes that in the 9^th Century a Spanish hermit, following the guidance of a field of stars, discovered the relics of the Apostle James in a cave near the Spanish coast. The veneration of those relics in the church where they came to rest is the goal of the pilgrims of the Way. Saint James became a particular object of veneration because he was believed to have intervened on behalf of Christian crusaders fighting to evict the Muslims (Santiago Matamoras – St. James the slayer of Moors), who had created a great culture of their own during the Middle Ages from the Iberian Peninsula. Continue reading →